 | |
| Total population | |
| c. 9,000 (by ancestry) c. 38,000 (by birth) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Suceava County, Bacău County, Galați County, Iași County, Constanța County, Brașov County, Prahova County, Vâlcea County and Timiș County) and in the Municipality of Bucharest | |
| Languages | |
| Romanian · Italian and Italian dialects | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Italians, Italian Belgians, Italian Britons, Italian Finns, Italian French, Italian Germans, Italian Spaniards, Italian Swedes, Italian Swiss, Corfiot Italians, Genoese in Gibraltar, Italians of Crimea, Italians of Odesa |
Italian Romanians (Italian: italo-romeni; Romanian: italo-români) are Romanian-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Romania during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Romania.
Italians have been present in Romania since the first half of the 19th century, when they emigrated from some Italian regions (particularly from Veneto and Friuli) to work in the mines, railway yards or construction.[3]
Italian Romanians are fairly dispersed throughout the country, even though there is a higher number of them in some parts of the country (particularly Suceava County, Bacău County, Galați County, Iași County, Constanța County, Brașov County, Prahova County, Vâlcea County and Timiș County), and in the Municipality of Bucharest.
As an officially recognised historical ethnic minority estimated at 9,000 Romanians of Italian ancestry, Italians have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. This was held by the Italian Community of Romania between 1992 and 2004, and the Association of Italians of Romania since 2004.
In recent years, the number of foreign-born Italians living in Romania has increased substantially. As of November 2007, there are some 12,000 foreign-born Italians in and around Timișoara.[4] About 3,000 square kilometres of land (2% of the agricultural land of Romania) have been bought by Italians.[4] Many are married to Romanians that they met in Italy, which now has the largest Romanian population in the world outside of Romania and Moldova.
According to Eurostat, in 2015 there were 38,580 persons born in Italy living in Romania.
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The territory of today's Romania has been part of the Italians' (especially Genoese and Venetians) trade routes on the Danube since at least the 13th century. They founded several ports on the Danube, including Vicina (near Isaccea), Sfântu Gheorghe, San Giorgio (Giurgiu) and Calafat.
The Genoese in the 13th century also created some colonies. The Turkish conquest massacred them, forcing the survivors to move elsewhere. Some managed to return to Liguria, but others remained in the area of Bessarabia and Dobruja. In fact, illustrious families of the Moldavian nobility—called boyarii (or boyars)—trace their origins back to some of these settlers. Such is the case of the Moldovan "Negruzzi" of the first half of the 19th century, a family to which Iacob Negruzzi and Costache Negruzzi belong.
Subsequently, the first Italians to emigrate permanently to the territory of present-day Romania were some families from Val di Fassa and Val di Fiemme (in Trentino) who, in 1821, were transferred to the Apuseni Mountains, in Transylvania, to work as woodcutters and lumberjacks on behalf of an Austrian timber merchant.[5] At the time, Triveneto, as well as Transylvania, was included in the Austrian Empire; these movements were therefore facilitated by Austria, as part of a policy of internal migration between the poorest and border regions of the Empire.[6]
The migratory flow continued after the unification of Italy, not only towards Austro-Hungarian Transylvania but also towards the rest of Romania (Principality of Moldavia and Wallachia) which, with the independence obtained from the Ottoman Empire (1877), and following the annexation of Veneto to Italy (1866), on the occasion of the Third Italian War of Independence, it became a migratory valve that was important for the poor and overpopulated region. At the end of the 19th century, in fact, about 10-15% of the emigrants who left from Veneto headed for Romania,[6] even if, often made up of seasonal migrations in the construction, railway construction, forests or in mines.[5] The number of Italian emigrants in Romania went from 830 in 1871 to more than 8,000 in 1901, according to estimates by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[5] After 1880, Italians from Friuli and Veneto settled in Greci, Cataloi and Măcin in Northern Dobruja. Most of them worked in granite quarries in the Măcin Mountains, some became farmers,[7] and others worked in road building.[8]
Italian emigration continued in the interwar period, reaching a peak of around 60,000 Italians in Romania in the 1930s, and gradually decreased in the 1940s. According to historical research, about 130,000 Italians moved to Romania between the end of the 19th century and World War II, most of whom returned to their homeland after 1945.[9] Those emigrants who had renounced their Italian citizenship remained in the Romanian cities. Today the historical Italian minority is estimated at 9,000 Romanians of Italian ancestry.
